Honest Oahu laptop repair

[Linkmeister]

Re: Honest Oahu laptop repair

www.computergeekshawaii.com Home of the $75 flat-rate computer repair. 599-4335
77 S. Pauahi (at Fort St. Mall)
1391 Kapiolani Bl.

Holy crap. $75 FLAT-RATE? How do they pay their rent in that Fort St. location?

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Update/ref/mahalo

Thanx, Lynn, that was a good ref. I'd suggest the Pauahi/Fort St. Gadget Guyz and their other shop at 1391 Kap. (the vacant car lot) to anyone. I felt they were very up & up.
Ended up just being a bad cord = $50 WOOHOO!

What kind of cord was that?

[Ron Whitfield]

Re: Update/ref/mahalo

Holy crap. $75 FLAT-RATE? How do they pay their rent in that Fort St. location?

They do cell phones and other gadget repairs/sales, and are pretty busy. Doubt they are getting rich tho...

What kind of cord was that?

The standard adaptor/power cord for this laptop. So far so good!

[Peshkwe]

Re: Honest Oahu laptop repair

Here's my sad tale! My HP dv (something or other) died last week. It was only 1 1/2 years old! The hard drive blew up. So many sectors went bad that nothing was retrieveable! Some local guys (in SoCal) charged me $50 for the diagnostic. They wanted $275 to install a new hard drive. Super Geeks at Best Buy wanted $325. Both wanted more money if they formatted the drive. All of a sudden this wasn't making economic sense! I bit the bullet and went out and bought a new laptop for not much more than the repairs. With the new computer, I got an I3 processor ( much faster than the Duo Core I had), Windows 7 (a big improvement over my previous Vista OS), Office 2010, and other improvements. I shopped various local places including Costco. I shopped the Internet too but wound up buying locally at OfficeMax where I got (for me) the best deal. OfficeMax offered me a 5 year warranty, including one free battery replacement, for $225 extra. This warranty covers EVERYTHING including if I drop it, spill a margarita on it, or sit on it. If it can't be fixed in 3 tries, they give me a new computer. There is zero deductible and it includes postage both ways. So I feel satisfied with my decision.

The rest of the story........I had backed up my previous laptop with a 4mb Flash Drive. But.......I only backed up ESSENTIAL files like Quicken. I lost about 90% of 25 or 30 years of stuff. This was personal stuff that was an important historical record for me. Pretty discouraging. So when buying this new laptop, I also purchased an HP 320mb portable hard drive from Costco for $60, about the size of two decks of cards. This thing is fantastic! You hook it to a USB port and it backs up automatically. It backs up all files that have been changed since the last backup or you can leave it plugged in and it backsup while you work! There is nothing you have to do, it is all automatic. You can search on the portable to see exactly what you have there.

I urge all HT ohana to give strong consideration to purchase a portable hard drive. Don't make the mistake I did! Yes there are companies that will attempt to access and retrieve files from a damaged hard drive, but they wanted $1500 to try, whether they were successful or not!

Good luck and be safe.

Don't throw away your old laptop. Experiment with it, unscrew different things and learn what is where in it. It might help you in the future if your new laptop has a hard drive failure, you might be able to replace it yourself.

Learn where the fan is and how to clean out the accumulated lint so it doesn't overheat and fry itself. Learn where the memory is so you can install more or replace a bad stick.

And always ALWAYS be redundant on your back ups. Periodically back up everything to a set of DVDs and then put em in someone else's home if the stuff on them is important to you...or in a safe deposit box if it's super important. Then at least once every two years (or sooner), check them and reburn them to new disks...dvd/cd's do go bad after a while.


Found this link that might give you an idea how to go about replacing stuff:

http://www.insidemylaptop.com/take-a...dv6000-laptop/


Who knows you might fix it and have a decent laptop to use or sell.

[matapule]

Re: Honest Oahu laptop repair

Don't throw away your old laptop. Experiment with it, unscrew different things and learn what is where in it

Excellent suggestions and thanks for the link! What's to lose?

[Peshkwe]

Re: Honest Oahu laptop repair

Excellent suggestions and thanks for the link! What's to lose?

Not a darned thing! If you find it's not so bad to figure out look online for a hard drive that matches the specs on your old one, there should be a sticker saying what they are on the hard drive itself.

Here's a couple places to look for parts:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/

http://www.newegg.com/

I took apart my old dell inspirion and replaced the hard drive after it totally died. My daughter has it now and it works fine.

Just make sure you have all the disks for the operating system and the drivers so you can reload it all after you fix it.

[matapule]

Re: Honest Oahu laptop repair

Just make sure you have all the disks for the operating system and the drivers so you can reload it all after you fix it.

That's the problem. It didn't come with recovery disks (most don't today) and I didn't make any. So I have to start from scratch, reformatting, and everything.

But still it would be fun to eviscerate and disembowel the thing!

[Peshkwe]

Re: Honest Oahu laptop repair

Then you can either call HP and get the operating system disks or you can go get your own version if you want to upgrade to say Windows 7 if it was XP to begin with ('cause HP will only send you what was installed when you got it).

Then with the new laptop go here:

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/support_task.html

Find the files you'll need for your sound/ video/ wireless etc...and put them into a folder that you can save then burn to a disk or store on your external. Then when you got the old lap up and running with the new OS, install the drivers for the assorted components.